Buying Essential Oils On Amazon

One of the best parts about shopping on Amazon is the insane selection, and searching for "essential oils" on the mega-site will return more than 100,000 results. But that also means a wide range in quality, especially because the way in which essential oils are made greatly affects their potency and purity. If your goal is to buy essential oil on Amazon without sacrificing quality, keep scrolling for expert tips and product recommendations that are worth your money.

How to Find a Quality Essential Oil

There are quite a few factors to keep in mind to figure out whether you're looking at a quality essential oil. Serena Goldstein, N.D., recommends doing your research on a company's own website before pulling the trigger on a purchase. It's a good sign when a company is forthcoming about where their materials come from and have independent studies conducted on their oils. Make sure the ingredient list only includes the oil itself and maybe a carrier oil, she says. And she cautions against third-party sellers on Amazon: "If something is significantly cheaper and it's through a third party, sometimes people might not always get exactly what they paid for," she says. Some sellers of essential oils have been known to add synthetic materials, vegetable oils, or cheaper, similar-smelling essential oils, without revealing the additives on their labels.

What to Look for On a Bottle

You should also look for the Latin name of the plant that you're buying on the bottle, says Ariana Lutzi, N.D., nutrition consultant for BUBS Naturals. If a price seems too good to be true, it probably is. "If one essential oil is $5 and then another one is $70, the cheaper is most likely going to be a poor product that's been diluted or not made with the plant part or piece that it claims," says Lutzi. Country of origin is also worth looking into, as oils from China and India have been known to be more contaminated with heavy metals, she notes. Look for wild-crafted or farm-harvested so you know that it wasn't just made from a batch of herbs bought online. Lutzi recommends going with wild-crafted when possible, but if you choose farm-harvested, double check that the plants weren't sprayed with pesticides.

doTERRA Breathe Respiratory Blend

doTERRA puts its oils through three rounds of testing to make sure they're free of contaminants before they're sold, according to the company's website. Breathe, its bestseller on Amazon, is a blend aimed to maintain clear airways and promote quality sleep. ($27; amazon.com)

doTERRA Emotional Aromatherapy System Touch Kit

This set includes five rollerballs meant to evoke different emotions. They each contain fractioned coconut oil, a carrier oil, so you can apply them directly to your skin. Just make sure to start with a patch test, since essential oils could potentially cause irritation for those with sensitive skin. ($117; amazon.com)

Plant Therapy Autumn Treasures Fall Blend Set

Every bottle of Plant Therapy oil has a batch code on the bottle. You can use it to look up the GC/MS report, which lists all the chemical components of a particular batch. "If you see something like GC/MS, that's important to know," says Lutzi. "That means that it's a higher quality oil because they did spectrometry on it to identify the levels of actual active oil constituents." Add these fall-themed blends to your cart if you love the smell of PSLs. ($25; amazon.com)

Mountain Rose Herbs Frankincense Essential Oil

Lutzi sites Mountain Rose Herbs as one of her favorite sources for essential oils. "They have the manufacturing practices that do certify that it's 100 percent pure and it's wild-crafted and not just made from a bag of rose petals that they don't know where it came from," she says. ($79; amazon.com)

Best used for: Reducing pain when applied topically, or relieving symptoms of respiratory conditions when inhaled